(Editor's note: Even as the Supreme Court reserves judgement on whether to commute the death sentences of three persons convicted for Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, here's the story of what happened and the roles the three convicts played in his killing. This part needs to be read along with Who killed Rajiv Gandhi? Do they deserve clemency? Read this and Who killed Rajiv Gandhi? Filmmakers, read this .)
Rajiv arrived at the venue at 2210 hours. He garlanded Indira Gandhi's statue which was about 200 yards from the dais. He spent some minutes there. It was around 22.18 hours that he reached the red carpet area.
There was commotion as Rajiv arrived. He was mobbed by people wanting to garland him. Latha Kannan garlanded Rajiv and told him that her daughter had composed a poem in Hindi in his honour and asked him whether he would like to hear it.
Former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.
Rajiv stopped. Kokila started reciting her poem. Dhanu (the LTTE suicide bomber) lunged forward, trying to pierce through the crowd. She was stopped in her tracks by a woman police officer, Anusuya. Rajiv noticed the dark, spectacled woman struggling to reach him and the sub-inspector restraining her.
"Relax. Take it easy," he told Anusuya politely. Released from Anusuya's grip, Dhanu approached Rajiv, then she dropped the garland, and knelt as if to pick it up or touch his feet. Haribabu (the photographer commissioned by the LTTE to record the killing) lifted his camera to shoot his 10th photo. As he pressed the button of his camera, Dhanu activated her belt bomb.
The explosion was deafening. Dhanu was blown away. Rajiv's upper-torso was virtually wiped out, only the back of his skull remained. His body could be recognised only through his white sports shoes. It was only after about half an hour that Rajiv's body, or whatever was left of it, could be put on a stretcher and carted to hospital.
It took the hospital staff more than eight hours to sew the body before Sonia Gandhi and Priyanka arrived by a special Indian Air Force plane around 09.00 hours the next day.
All hell broke loose after the blast. People ran helter-skelter. A rumour that there would be more blasts spread like jungle fire. Within minutes, the ground was empty. Even the policemen fled. Only the IG, Raghavan, and a few policemen hung (around).
Sivarasan (LTTE's man overseeing the assassination) ran to the Indira Gandhi statue. He had directed every member of the assassination squad to reach the spot immediately after the explosion. Subha and Nalini were already waiting there. Sivarasan told them not to wait for Haribabu as he too had died.
The conspirators had not brought any vehicle as it could have been identified and their escape noted. They walked briskly towards the highway. Sivarasan was feeling thirsty. They stopped near a cluster of houses. An old woman was standing in front of her house, trying to figure out the cause of the explosion.
On Sivarasan's instructions, Nalini asked for water. After quenching his thirst, Sivarasan told the old woman Rajiv Gandhi had died in a blast.
As they neared the highway, they spotted an auto rickshaw. The driver was waiting for a group of Congress workers he had brought. Sivarasan told him there was no point waiting for anybody as a bomb had exploded and many people, including Rajiv Gandhi, had been killed. The driver, convinced by Sivarasan's argument and a promise of Rs 75, agreed to ferry them, but only up to Poonamallee where the municipal limits of his permit ended. It suited the squad fine.
The drive from Sriperumbudur to Poonamallee threw up one more mystery which remains unsolved till date. Worse, the mystery element was not even investigated.
A young man had also got into the auto. He had sat with the driver and did not talk to anyone. In fact, nobody talked to anybody, the auto driver recalled when questioned by the SIT.
The unidentified man got off about 2 km short of Poonamallee, and without a word or looking back, just disappeared into the darkness. Did he pay? The driver gave an emphatic 'no'. "I thought that he was with them," the driver said referring to Sivarasan, Nalini and Subha.
Who was this mysterious man?
Kumudavalli said she saw a young bearded man, in shirt and a pair of trousers, hanging around Sivarasan and Dhanu, talking to both of them.
Was he Sivarasan's accomplice or his boss? Most likely, this unidentified man was his assistant. Kumudavalli did not recall seeing the man giving any orders to Sivarasan.
No search party was sent to inquire about the man who got off near Poonamallee. There is no mention about him in any charge-sheet. No attempt was made to get more details of his description. No computer sketch of his was prepared. Obviously, in the absence of answers to these questions, investigators do not even know whether he is alive or dead. And yet, he could have been the key spoke in the conspiracy wheel.
On the way to Poonamallee, Sivarasan kept tearing off the pages of the notebook that he carried to pose as a reporter. Perhaps he had jotted down something. Or perhaps, he did not want even a blank notebook to fall into the hands of the police. Balls of torn pages rolled into nowhere on the wind-swept road. Nothing was left of it by the time the auto reached Poonamallee.
This was only the first leg of the journey from Sriperumbudur to Madras after the assassination. The second and third legs were rather uneventful. Sivarasan had to wake up an auto rickshaw driver in Poonamallee. He was hired only up to Mount Road, where Sivarasan took a third auto rickshaw to Kondagayayur.
Sivarasan had seen police strength swelling every minute with more and more police vehicles seen after every kilometre. Some people had started stoning vehicles also.
It was 01.30 hours when they reached Madras.
Nalini was too scared to stay alone in her room. When the auto rickshaw stopped, she did not get off saying she wanted to be with them. Sivarasan did not argue further and beckoned the driver to drive on. This was the only conversation among the hit squad members that the auto rickshaw driver recalled when interrogated by the SIT.
Sivarasan started looking for someone the moment he entered the house. He flew into a rage when he saw Santhan. Santhan was snoring away on the terrace.
The One-eyed Jack (Sivarasan) was not the type to fall apart at the drop of a hat. He performed yoga religiously every morning for half an hour. Besides keeping his body chiseled and fit like a fiddle, the yogic exercises also ensured he kept his cool under all circumstances.
It was incredible for the chief of the assassination squad to believe any member of his team could be sleeping on the night of the Tigers.
Sivarasan tried to wake up Santhan. First, he called him by name, then he shook him. When all this failed he kicked him. Santhan got up with a start.
Sivarasan told Santhan if he ever got caught it would be while he was sleeping.
Subha (the back-up assassin to Dhanu) had shut herself in a room as soon as she reached Jaykumar's house after the kill.
The Black Tigress was upset over Dhanu's death. She had controlled her tears throughout the journey from Sriperumbudur to Madras but now she confined herself in the room for two days. Her behaviour was very human, quite unlike her Black Tigress training which makes delicate girls into walking scorpions.
On May 24 night Sivarasan sent a coded message to Pottu Amman (the LTTE intelligence chief), saying: "Subha not eating. Crying all the time. Difficult for us to control her."
Pottu Amman replied that all possible attempts be made to console Subha and added that her name would be written in letters of gold in the history of "Tamil Eelam".
As everybody, including the hit squad members, fled after the blast, nobody noticed Haribabu's camera. It lay on the photographer chest for quite some before a Tamil Nadu Police officer, Raghavan, chanced upon it.
Raghavan immediately opened the camera, took out the reel and handed it over to a policeman to get it developed without any delay. A local photographer was woken up, but he did not have the facility to develop a coloured film. The policeman had to go to Madras to get the reel developed, but after the blast even the police vehicles had disappeared. Left with nothing, he hitch-hiked his way to Madras to get the reel developed.
At least one more murder would have been committed had Sivarasan known that Haribabu had left behind damning evidence and that a policeman without protection was heading in the same direction as him with it.
Haribabu's photos exposed the LTTE on May 24 when Dhanu's photograph was published by The Hindu. The next day, other newspapers published another photograph, showing Dhanu holding a garland. By now, Dhanu was the suspected suicide bomber.
The heat turned on Sivarasan and his killer squad after the One-eyed Jack was identified as the main suspect. Then began India's most dramatic manhunt.
IB's chief of operations in Madras had a sleepless night on May 21. By the next day, Vatsan and his men had received information which was to prove crucial. The Haribabu-Muthuraja-Bhagyanathan nexus had come to light. The IB had begun making discreet inquiries about Bhagyanathan, though at that time it was not known that his sister, Nalini, was a more important conspirator. Vatsan, in his early fifties made the most out of about hundred personnel under his command. Vatsan was also instrumental in steering the investigators to the right direction. "Look for the one-eyed man, Raghuvaran," was the crisp message he passed on to the investigators.
CBI chief Vijay Karan and other investigators flew to Colombo on May 23. By that time, Vatsan and his men had collected more information about One-eyed Jack. He maintained this man could even have been involved in the Padmanabha assassination barely a year ago. Vijay Karan and company were also told by Sri Lankan officials that they would do their best if they looked for Raghuvaran whose movements in the past five or six months had been suspicious.
A Special Investigation Team, the SIT, headed by DR Karthikeyan, was formed. Karthikeyan's appointment was viewed with surprise in security and media circles. Chasing murderers through magnifying glasses was not exactly his forte.
A SIT team flew to Madras from Delhi hours after the assassination. It included Vijay Karan, additional director SK Datta, DIG Amod Kanth, SP Amit Varma, DSP M Narayana (all from the CBI), eminent explosives expert Major Sabbharwal from the NSG and three of his colleagues, computer expert D Ram from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) and two more of his colleagues, and the IB's Ajit Doval (joint director, Operations), ESL Narasimhan, joint director (SA), and Colonel Sundaram.
The diminutive, dark-complexioned Doval is known for daredevil operations and brilliant methods for collecting intelligence. Col Sundaram is a walking encyclopaedia on explosives and ammunitions. Narasimhan is an expert on the LTTE and knows the terrorist outfit like the back of his palm.
RAW chief GS Bajpai and his IB counterpart MK Narayanan also arrived in Madras. Their efforts were supplemented by invaluable local inputs from AX Alexander (RAW), Vatsan (IB), S Ramani from the CBI, who later briefly became security advisor-cum-investigator to the Jain Commission of Inquiry, and IG RK Raghavan, DIG Perumal Swami, SP D Manoharan (all of the Tamil Nadu police). M Raghottaman, a DSP of CBI, Madras,worked as SIT's chief investigating officer. CBI's legal wing officer Jacob Daniel was made available to the SIT full time for his advice on tricky situations.
Initially, about 30 investigators worked on the SIT round the clock. Besides, a host of finger-print, forensic, ballistic and computer experts were roped in. A number of commandos were attached to the SIT and put under the command of a highly motivated officer, Captain Ravi. Several squads of sniffer dogs and a helicopter were kept at the SIT's disposal. As the case became curiouser and curiouser, the SIT's strength rose steadily, peaking at over a hundred.
The SIT was equipped well to crack open a blind assassination. But initially, top investigative brains of the country did not even know for hours together whether it was a bomb or a landmine that killed Rajiv.
The writer is a Firstpost columnist who tweets @Kishkindha and can be reached at bhootnath004@yahoo.com
